Morning Report for September 25, 2013

* Jeff Bezos says of his Washington Post visit: “My impression was people are super excited, and excited about the future! They’re optimistic.” Will he buy other papers? “No, I don’t think so.” (theverge.com)* More Bezos: “[The Post is] a personal investment. I’m hopeful that I can help from a distance in part by providing runway for them to do a series of experiments, in part through bringing some of the philosophy that we have used at Amazon to the Post.” (cnn.com)
* Young freelancers in Syria are paid as little as $70 per story. “Experienced journalists do not want to do it, because it’s so dangerous,” says a Vanity Fair contributing editor. (observer.com)
* McClatchy is ending its health-care plan for retirees. (bloomberg.com)
* Former Tribune Co. executive gets two years in prison for stealing $260,000 from the company. (chicagotribune.com)
* BuzzFeed president tells Princeton audience: “The concept of having entertaining content adjacent to hard news content is very traditional, actually.” (dailyprincetonian.com)
* Lloyd’s List, which started as a 16th century coffee-shop newsletter, kills its print edition after learning that 97 percent of its readers prefer online news. (theguardian.com)* Tony Soprano would be furious: Crain’s kills Waste & Recycling News — “the best damn paper I read,” says one disappointed commenter. (wasterecylingnews.com) | “People loved WRN, almost universally, despite the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that we didn’t act like a typical trade publication.” (wasterecyclingnews.com)
* CNBC’s Joe Kernen apologizes for making a 7-Eleven joke with an Indian accent. (gawker.com)
* Indiana University provost releases proposal outlining the possible merger of the departments of Communication and Culture and Telecommunications and the School of Journalism. They would be called The Media School. (idsnews.com) | (indiana.edu)
* A columnist says he wasn’t allowed on EasyJet after tweeting a critical comment about the airline. (thedrum.com)
* Take the 2013 Media Credentialing Survey. The results will be used as support for research and legislative efforts to improve newsgatherer access. (dmlp.org)